“What in hell did I do?” he asked the darkness. “Hopped onto my half sister. Well, that’s almost fashionable these days, isn’t it? All the good families do it, and without witnesses, too. Now I’m on my way out because of it. Why?”
He tried to think that he had crossed Sir Hugo’s interests in some way but could not think of any woman he had had that Sir Hugo wanted. He wasn’t exactly champion wasteful with money; in fact, he had a fair amount of his allowance hidden away, since he had gotten his fingers burned gambling the year before and had lost his taste for the tables. He had not purchased anything extravagant, or at least nothing so extravagant that would make his father bite furniture over it.
God’s Balls, he thought suddenly; the old fart’s gone smash over some investment and I’m now expendable. He can’t afford to keep all of us and I’m only half a son, not like Gerald. If I’m not careful I’ll end up some drudging clerk. Maybe someplace brutal and nasty, like Liverpool. But why not just call me in and tell me I’m chucked…?
He shivered with the cold, and with his misery, clamping his knees together to control his aching bladder, and waited for the dawn, soon too foxed by wine to keep his eyes open, dreaming of revenge and triumph.
* * *
It was four days before Alan was freed from his cold and gloomy garret prison to be brought down to the study. He did not make a very pretty picture by then. His light brown hair was lank about his face and his queue was loose. He wore no neckstock, and his fashionable white silk waistcoat all sprigged with red and blue flowers was crumpled from service as a pillow. His silk stockings had ladders in them, and his tightly cut grey blue satin suit looked more like a stained and bedraggled bad bargain from a ragpicker’s barrow.
On the way down he had seen Gerald entertaining a strange man in the parlor by the fire, the man swathed in a voluminous dark blue cape held open for warmth from the grate.
Court official? Alan wondered. Or one of Gerald’s lovers getting his equipment to room temperature? But there’s no sign of the Charlies about. No one seeming to be a member of the watch, usually spavined oldsters with cudgels, was in evidence, and he considered that a reason for cheer. God knew he needed some badly at that point. He had fretted and pondered feverishly all the time of his confinement as to what last straw he had broken, if any, and what was to be his fate.
He was led to face his father, who glowered at him from the study fireplace. Pilchard stood behind the writing desk with his most serious legal face on.
“You know Mister Pilchard,” Sir Hugo began. “He has paid you out of trouble often enough in the past for you two to be good friends by now, hasn’t he? Well, hasn’t he?”
“I suppose so, sir,” Alan meekly responded.
“What could have possessed you?” Sir Hugo demanded. “You realize this isn’t some country girl to be fobbed off with twenty pounds. This is your own sister you tried to rape. You are finished, boy.”
“What rape?” Alan shot back, but shuddering cold inside. “Not until that Bible Thumper stuck his beak in, it wasn’t rape.”
“You’re facing a hanging offense,” Sir Hugo intoned.
“But it wasn’t rape! She was the one that wanted to do it and I went along with it. You know her nature, surely—”
“What’s worse, I know yours,” Sir Hugo shot back.
“Then you know I wouldn’t have to depend on rape. The town’s full of quim to be had, without a bit of struggle.”
“That nature of yours could get you hanged, Alan,” Sir Hugo said. “You were caught in the act, and we have witnesses.”
“And I can provide a platoon of witnesses for myself, and for my dear sister’s character as well, if it comes to that.”
“Only if it comes to trial, boy.”
“What is this? Just what do you want from me? Since when have you gotten so holy?”
“Sir Hugo and I … that is, we … have come to what we believe to be a most salutary solution to the contretemps which you brought about by your unnatural act of forcible rape upon your sister,” Pilchard said from behind the desk. “For the sake of your family we—”
“Oh, don’t prose like a front bencher in Parliament, Pilchard,” Sir Hugo said crossly, going to the sideboard for an early morning brandy. “Get to the meat of it.”
“You are to be banished,” Pilchard summed up. “You may never more lay claim to the Willoughby name—”
“I never did, you miserable ass.”
“Pray allow me to continue, young sir,” Pilchard said, wagging a finger at him. “You must go away, for the family’s best interests. You can no longer reside under this roof, in London or in England. And it would be most inadvisable for you to return, for obvious reasons.”
“You’re raving—” Alan blanched.
“If you do not, then we shall summon the watch and have you taken before the magistrate. We have no choice,” Sir Hugo warned, making happy sounds from the brandy decanter with his back to the show.
“Your sister is the one who wishes to prefer charges,” Pilchard informed him. “While we wish to spare her reputation, and the family reputation, she has decided otherwise. If this does go to court you would throw undying shame on your own family, and it would most likely cost you your life. At best, commitment to Bedlam as an uncontrollable lunatic. Do you understand the seriousness of what you have done?”
Alan was stunned into silence, beginning to doubt his memories of the incident. Belinda wants to prosecute me? She’s a brainless whore. No, there’s something here that isn’t right.
The whole thing was astonishing, too astonishing to be credited. Part of the shock to his system, admittedly, was the realization that he would have to give up his whole life, even if he, by acquiesence, saved his mere existence. There went the girls, the money, the parties, his circle of friends and fellow roisterers, all the pleasures of the world’s greatest city. Not to mention the perquisites of the moderate wealth of even a second son.
“We have here an agreement which Sir Hugo hopes you have the wit to sign, which will spare your family any further loss of reputation.”
“What reputation did you have in mind? The good name of Sir Hell-Fire Club over there, my sister the open beard, or my brother the butt-fucking Molly?” Alan scoffed.
Morton must have been in the room behind him all that time, for Alan’s arms were seized at the elbows and forced high behind his back, bringing a yelp of pain and surprise from him as he was forced into a half-crouch to the floor.
“I hope you’re enjoying this, you butcher’s dog,” Alan managed to get out between clenched teeth.
“I am, sir,” Morton whispered into his ear. “An’ about time, too, let me tell ya!”
“Now listen to me, you little bastard,” Sir Hugo said, leaning over the edge of the desk so he could stare into Alan’s face. “What we want from you is for you to be gone. And we don’t want any public trial, so there won’t be one. You’ll have to leave the city and the country, but you’ll be alive. And with some money in hand to spend on your beastly habits.”
“My beastly habits? What about yours…? Oww!” Alan went to his knees as Morton applied more pressure. “I suppose you want me to admit to a rape I didn’t commit, too.”
“Not at all,” Pilchard said. “You merely have to sign this and go.”
I’m as good as knackered right now, he told himself sadly; I haven’t a hope in hell of fighting this, whatever it is.
“Father,” Alan asked as sweetly as he could under the circumstances, “just why is this necessary? Was I any bigger a sinner than the rest of us? Have I cost you more money than Belinda does? She spends more on the Strand in a day than I do in a month. And half of London knows all about Gerald. Last time he went to Bath he was lucky to escape alive. I’m not going to inherit anyway, so why are you doing this?”